Category Archives: Misc

I found the most beautiful thing while going down memory lane this morning I stumbled over this video from way back when.

Sometimes it is good to sit back and reflect on the wonders we have in our lives today which we no longer perceive as such. We are surrounded by wonderful things which we notice the same way we notice a ghost before our eyes. We are sleep-walking by them refusing to give our brain the chance truly understand.

From the omnipresent cellphone to the internet of things. The space projects which received a recent boost through Elon Musk to the vast data centers set up by Amazon and Google. These are all man made marvels. However I challenge you to think back to the last time you marveled at a butterfly or the beautiful lines in a tree from the ground to the sky.

Think back at the progress human kind has made in your lifetime and then think forward to the change our kids may see.

In the sixties it was all but certain that by the year 2000 we will be traveling to the moon on a regular basis. While this has not panned-out we have accelerated in other areas. We have overcome the cold war, rivers were cleaned up and nature was preserved. We are working towards high-tech, higher-tech, and cyber-tech. When the borg meet Wall-E, HALL 9000 will be forgotten.

About TechShop

Founded in October 2006, TechShop started as a membership-based, do-it-yourself (DIY) workshop and fabrication studio. Over a decade later, TechShop, Inc. grew into an international consulting company sharing it’s makerspace expertise with grade schools and fortune 500 companies alike.

TechShop offered consulting, market assessments, licensing options, curriculum, and various other managed services to economic development councils, libraries, non-profits and educational institutions, design firms and other makerspaces. TechShop encourages you to find a way to grow the maker movement in your community. It’s worth the effort.

TechShop-Makerspace

RIP TechShop

Yesterday TechShop suddenly filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. TechShop is no more and its remaining assets will be sold off by the appointed Trustee.

Embrace

It hits home insofar as we have purchased one of the original Embrace bracelets for my son who has seizures. This device will send out an alarm when a seizure occurs to the connected phones. It was listed as one of the success stories coming out of the TechShop.

+200,000 infants reached+13,000 health care workers trained105 programs in 20 countriesA life-saving incubation blanket for babies. In 2008, a group of Stanford students sought to address high mortality rates among premature and low-birth-weight babies by designing a better incubator for the developing world. The invention, the Embrace infant warmer, was prototyped at TechShop San Francisco and is now saving thousands of lives worldwide.

As I am still working on my Video Doorbell, I can use NOVA-Labs which is very close by. As of today, some Americans will no longer have the ability to roll down the road to get their inventions into reality.

It would be great if the likes of Amazon, Apple, Google would step up and sponsor these types of locations all around to keep the spark of innovation going.

I needed a new backdrop image for my YouTube Channel and while I was trying to come up with a good idea I wanted to see which results from Fiverr I could expect.

Fiverr

So at first I wanted to try the “Request a Gig”. However I did not appreciate that this feature is a curated feature and my request was rejected the next morning for some technical reasons. Obviously I sent in a support request because I wanted to understand what I had done wrong.

In the meantime I went ahead and was looking through the hundreds of designers who offered their services. This took about two hours of my time, which is exactly the reason I sent out the Request a Gig – request in the first place.

eventually I found a designer who had good reviews and was not asking for US $2800,- but a more reasonable $5,- for Basic, $15,- for standard, and $30 for the VIP package. Since I did not need VIP treatment but at the same time I though $5,- was on the cheap side, I went ahead and requested the $15,- standard package.

However I wanted to get at least one or two ideas / samples from him before I placed my order to avoid working with some one who is on a completely different train. So I contacted him, send him my requirements, and was surprised to see about 30 minutes later 4 screenshots with initial design suggestions.

Out of those I found one design which I considered a good starting point. So I asked him if he is willing to make some changes and replace some of the elements in the image with others. Wow, within about 15 minutes he had applied my changes.
I was impressed and wanted to place my order but he insisted that I first had to be happy with the results before I placed my order. I thought he wanted to avoid bad reviews, and as long as you don’t place an order I guess you can send a bad review ?

So anyways, long story short, it took a few hours back and forth, me on my smart phone, and he on his computer to eventually arrive to the image below.

Backdrop created with Fiverr.

I was really happy with the results from Fiverr, and went ahead, placed my order and he sent the Adobe Illustrator file plus some rendered JPGs. However I found out that Inkscape on Linux would load the whole source file as a single Layer which was not what I wanted. So I asked him to send me the file as an SVG, which he promptly did, though yet again I could only see a single Layer.

I went again back and asked him to provide me the layers in separate layers, which he uploaded right away. All in all he provided me
12 layers which I could then import in The GIMP in separate Layers and render to my liking.

Results from Fiverr

Overall this was a great experience and after I acknowledged the reception of my goods Fiverr offered the opportunity to give him another tip, which I gladly did.

All together, including tips and fees, I spent $27,- on the image and I had a great experience.

I have to say though that Fiverr is taking a bite out of you if you end up going for the $5,- Fiverr is charging you $1,- for a gig, Wich amounts to a whopping 16.66% of the total cost.